Annual Dros Meeting Format

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What better way to get the ball rolling here on BIONET/DROSOPHILA
that to hear opinions about last weeks Dros meeting.
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As many of you are probably aware the San Diego meeting last week
was of a different format to previous Annual Drosophila Conferences.
Concurrent sessions were minimised and Poster presentations greatly
expanded.
During the conference I heard many complaints and commendations of this
new format. The organizers openly encouraged everyone to communicate their
feelings about the new arrangments, be they positive or negative, to their
local representative.
Seems to me that this newsgroup would be perfect forum
for feedback about this change, and if it should continue next year.
So here's my opinion, and I encourage everyone to post theirs also.
Perhaps someone can undertake to keep a summary and pass it on to
those organizing next years conference.
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Personally I didn't mind the new format, except for the fact that I had two
posters to take care of and one was even and the other odd (my own fault for
being too productive I guess).
It seems to me that when you deal with people on a one to one basis at a
poster session you are more likely to get useful feedback than you are with a
10 minute oral presentation, especially when the people before you run
overtime and the session chair decides there's no time left for questions,
which occurs far too frequently for my liking.
My only suggestion would be to break up the sessions into topics rather than be
be completely arbitrary with A,B, odd or even. For example
Poster session 1 - Posters 250-353:
Cell cycle, Transposable elements and Biochemical genetics.
A posters 2-3pm, B posters 3-4pm.
Poster session 2: Posters 353-498: Neurobiology.
A posters 8-9pm, B posters 9-10pm.
Etc etc
For me this would be better since it would bring all those interested in a
particular topic into the same place at the same time and would free up other
times when you are not interested in the session to do other things.
Well that's my opinion - Any others ???
BILL
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William D. WARREN, PhD
Center for Agricultural Biotechnology Email: ww40 at umail.umd.edu
University of Maryland at College Park Phone: (301) 405-7681
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